Basic vs Dynamic

[Chuckster]

On a server running Windows 2003... what would be best - dynamic or basic? The HDDs are all set to RAID 5 through the hardware BIOS and was wondering if it's best use dynamic since at the moment the HDDs are all basic.

[dan400007]

I'm not aware of any performance advantages of dynamic drives over basic. I've yet to find dynamic disks of any great help apart from where you need to have a RAID 0/1 array running in software.

[Michael]

The fact that you're running hardware RAID, there's no advantage to my knowledge. If you wanted to run software RAID, then your disks would have to be dynamic.

[Chuckster]

Thanks guys. That's cleared that one up for me.

[pete]

And if you format a iSCSI mounted volume as a dynamic disk it won't survive a reboot if you're using the MS iSCSI initiator - it doesn't support dynamic disks as of 2.07.

 

(not actually your question, but possibly useful for later searchers)

[tmcd35]

And if you format a iSCSI mounted volume as a dynamic disk it won't survive a reboot if you're using the MS iSCSI initiator - it doesn't support dynamic disks as of 2.07.

 

(not actually your question, but possibly useful for later searchers)

 

Answers a possible problem on one of our servers. I'm not a work now, so I can't check. If the drive in question is Dynamic, then we've found all you need to do is re-initilise the disk and it's back safe and sound.